Lith printing is a simple but ‘different’ Black & White printing technique, using ‘ordinary’ B&W or colour negatives, a suitable black & white paper and Lith developer – from which the process gets its name. It involves heavily overexposing a suitable black and white paper – usually by two or three stops - and then only partially developing it in a highly diluted lith developer.

This process has often been shrouded in mystery and described as ‘unduplicatable’ with no two prints ever looking similar. I don’t agree with this and have attempted to unravel the mechanics of the process in order that, by better understanding what is happening, one may control and therefore predict results. As is often the case with such things, it turns out that the rules of the game are actually quite simple. Certainly it is a very controllable process and it is possible to reproduce results very closely.